Ivan Silayev

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"Silayev" redirects here. For the surname, see Silayev (surname). For the ice hockey player, see Ivan Silayev (ice hockey).
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Stepanovich and the family name is Silayev.

Ivan Silayev
Иван Силаев
28th Central Committee
In office
3 March 1981 – 26 July 1991
Personal details
Born(1930-10-21)21 October 1930
Baktyzino, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died8 February 2023(2023-02-08) (aged 92)
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia[2]
Political partyIndependent
Other political
affiliations		Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1959–1991)
Signature

Ivan Stepanovich Silayev (Russian: Ива́н Степа́нович Сила́ев; 21 October 1930 – 8 February 2023) was a Soviet and Russian politician. He served as

Inter-republican Economic Committee (20 September – 14 November 1991). Responsible for overseeing the economy of the Soviet Union during the late Gorbachev era, he was the last head of government of the Soviet Union, succeeding Valentin Pavlov
.

After graduating in the 1950s, Silayev began his political career in the

chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR, which he had been appointed to in June of that year. There he faced several cabinet difficulties during his tenure, and while he supported the majority of Boris Yeltsin's policies, he opposed the secessionist policies of Yeltsin, which led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, during his concurrent tenure as Soviet Premier, which he overtook in August 1991. Therefore, a month later, he was removed from the post of Prime Minister of the Russian SFSR and was replaced by acting Prime Minister Oleg Lobov
.

Silayev de facto became Prime Minister of the Soviet Union on 28 August 1991 following the failed

European Community (the European Union since 1992) until his resignation in 1994. During the 2007 legislative election, Silayev ran as a candidate for the Agrarian Party of Russia
.

Early life and career

Silayev was born on 21 October 1930,

Kazan Aviation Institute in 1954 as a mechanical engineer. In 1959 Silayev became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). During his tenure at the Gorky Aviation Plant (Gorky is now Nizhny Novgorod), where he started in 1954, he advanced from the lowest level to become the plant's foreman from 1971 to 1974.[4]

Following this, Silayev served as Deputy Minister of Aviation Industry, and was later appointed

Chernobyl Disaster.[5]

Russian SFSR premiership

Appointment

The election of a

economic reform plan to the Supreme Soviet deputies; in it industry would be privatised, and subsidies to unprofitable enterprises would cease in a 100 Days reform package. Silayev did not have any similar economic reform plans but was widely considered to be Yeltsin's favourite for the post.[6]

In the first round of voting, Silayev earned 119 votes, while Bocharov earned 86 votes. To be elected to the post, a candidate needed to win over half of the vote; neither Silayev nor Bocharov succeeded in this. Seeing that Silayev was Yeltsin's favourite, and had won more votes than Bocharov, Silayev ran unchallenged in the second election round, and was thus elected by 15 June a large margin.[6][7] On June 18, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR approved the appointment of Silayev as Prime Minister.[7]

Gorbachev tried to break the Silayev–Yeltsin alliance but to no avail. In 1989, Valentin Pavlov, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from 14 January to 28 August 1991, had gathered together enough information on the errors and omissions of Silayev to weaken his position as Deputy Premier. Silayev never forgave Pavlov and relations between the two grew colder when Pavlov became the Prime Minister.[8]

Silayev's government

Silayev repeatedly opined that if he ever was given conflicting instructions by the Premier of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin, he would always "observe the laws of the RSFSR", meaning he would obey Yeltsin. During his tenure as Premier, Silayev was never the de facto leader of the government cabinet and was loyal to Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. In contrast to his predecessor, Aleksandr Vlasov, Silayev tried to modernise the Russian Government.[9] Silayev decided to break with the old Soviet nomenklatura system of electing cabinet members by electing members using an "objective" and "scientific" basis. To accomplish this, Silayev asked professional psychologists to interview candidate cabinet members. Only 14 of the 200 cabinet candidates were recommended for a post in the government cabinet; even so, several of the candidates were given a post in the new government. All candidate members were selected by either Silayev, Yeltsin, or the Supreme Soviet.[10]

Silayev's government lacked ideological unity,[

500 Days Programme. However, some commentators[who?] believe Yavlinsky resigned because of frequent conflict between him and other cabinet members. RSFSR Minister of Finance Boris Fyodorov resigned on 5 December 1990, and accused the First Deputy Premiers of taking important financial decisions on behalf of the ministry and him as minister behind his back. Lobov, the First Deputy Premier in charge of regional development, had become a de facto leader of the cabinet. Lobov was Yeltsin's favourite, and tried to weaken Silayev's position within the cabinet.[11] With the consent of the Supreme Soviet Silayev established a 16-member Presidium for the cabinet.[12]

Another problem facing Silayev was that the Supreme Soviet was usurping the power of the

legislative branch. To accomplish this, the Supreme Soviet established duplicated entities, such as the Committee for Mass Media, which duplicated the functions of the Ministry of Mass Media. Viktor Kisin, the Minister of Industry, told the press that the only employee of his ministry was in fact himself. In July 1990, Silayev agreed to create parallel executive-legislative administrative bodies.[13]

In December 1990, the

marketisation of the economy. The reform plan was criticised by an official from the State Committee on Economic Reform of the central government; he called the plan "a statement of intents"; instead of an economic reform, he called it a "manifesto". A Supreme Soviet deputy noted the proposed reform lacked real statistical insight. Even so, the proposed reform received a majority in a Supreme Soviet vote; Yeltsin's supporters knew that his economic reform proposal had to be accepted before the July presidential election.[14] Following the July presidential election, the Russian government resigned, and the post of premier was once again up for election. Silayev had strong competitors for the post, such as Yurii Skokov, but won the election.[15]

Soviet premiership

Further information: Silayev's Government

The

Soviet economy.[19]

On 28 August 1991, a Supreme Soviet temporarily gave the COMSE the same authority as the Cabinet of Ministers,

Inter-republican Economic Committee (IEC), which was better thought to work between the different member republics, as its function was to coordinate economic policy across the Soviet Union, and was created by law on 5 September, but members were not immediately selected. Silayev finally also became IEC's chairman on 20 September (while other members were different from COMSE), formally strengthening his position in the union, but he presided over a quickly disintegrating Soviet Union and was dismissed as Russian Premier only a few days later.[22] Further disintegration of the USSR, with several republics becoming independent states, led to the transformation of the IEC into the Interstate Economic Committee of the Economic Community [ru][21] on 14 November, which was to coordinate relations between the union republics and the republics that seceded from the USSR.[23] Silayev remained Chairman of the new IEC and was considered "Prime Minister of the Economic Community",[24]
although the office and the community had no future, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union coming only weeks later.

When he first took office, holding the Russian premiership under

First Deputy Premier, led the anti-Silayev faction in the Russian SFSR Council of Ministers and managed to oust him on 26 September 1991; Lobov succeeded him as acting Premier of the Russian SFSR.[22] Silayev, as overseer of the economy, was given the task of initiating economic reforms in the Soviet Union in a way that suited both the central government and the Soviet republics.[25] Silayev tried to maintain an integrated economy while initiating the marketisation of the economy.[26] On 19 December 1991, Yeltsin declared the COMSE committee, which served as the Soviet Union's last government, dissolved, and Silayev retired from his post, one day after he had been appointed to his new position as a diplomat for Russia.[21] The legality of the dissolution was unclear, as Gorbachev had not concurred with it, and so most members remained in office and continued their work. Оn 25 December 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation from the post of President of the USSR in connection with the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States,[27] meaning that the union government ceased to exist.[28]

Later career and death

On 18 December 1991, Silayev was appointed by Yeltsin as the

European Community in Brussels;[29] he resigned from this post on 7 February 1994. In late 1994, Silayev became the President of the Machine-Building Association of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which consisted of more than a hundred civilian and military enterprises and associations, mostly of Russian origin. He became a member of the Ecological Movement "Cedar" in 1995. From 1998, he was President of Industrial Machine, an industrial and financial group; he simultaneously headed the National Committee, which promotes economic cooperation with Latin America. On 26 September 2002, Silayev became Chairman of the Russian Union of Mechanical Engineers.[4] During the 2007 legislative election, Silayev ran as a candidate for the Agrarian Party, but failed to get elected.[4]

Silayev died on 8 February 2023, at the age of 92 in Nizhny Novgorod.[30][31] He was buried on February 11, 2023, at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow next to his wife, who died on 18 March 2006.[32] The farewell ceremony was attended by 30 to 40 people.

Recognition

Silayev was awarded an Order of Lenin on two different occasions—once in 1971, and another during a closed session of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1975, when he was also awarded a Hero of Socialist Labour. He was awarded a Lenin Prize in 1972. In 1981, he was awarded the Order of the October Revolution and in 2002, the National Prize of Peter the Great. On 19 October 2000 and on 21 October 2005, Silayev was awarded the Diploma of the Government of the Russian Federation.[4]

Citations

  1. ^ "Указ Президента СССР от 20.09.1991 N УП-2599". www.libussr.ru.
  2. ^ "Скончался экс-директор нижегородского завода — Последние новости Нижнего Новгорода и области | NewsNN". newsnn.ru.
  3. ISBN 9781850434870
    – via Google Books.
  4. ^ a b c d e Staff writer. Силаев, Иван Степанович [Silayev, Ivan Stepanovich] (in Russian). warheroes.ru. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-8157-3619-3
    .
  6. ^ a b Shevchenko 2004, p. 51.
  7. ^ a b Силаев Иван Степанович
  8. ISBN 1-55970-182-X
    .
  9. ^ Shevchenko 2004, pp. 51–52.
  10. ^ Shevchenko 2004, p. 52.
  11. ^ Shevchenko 2004, p. 54.
  12. ^ Shevchenko 2004, pp. 54–55.
  13. ^ Shevchenko 2004, pp. 49–50.
  14. ^ Shevchenko 2004, p. 44.
  15. ^ a b Shevchenko 2004, p. 65.
  16. ISBN 978-0-14-103797-4
    .
  17. ISBN 1-59213-362-2
    .
  18. ^ "Указ Президента СССР от 24.08.1991 N УП-2461". www.libussr.ru.
  19. ISBN 0-415-07580-7
    .
  20. ^ "Постановление Верховного Совета СССР от 28.08.1991 N 2367-I "О недоверии Кабинету Министров СССР" | ГАРАНТ". base.garant.ru.
  21. ^ a b c "Silaev, Ivan Stepanovich" [Силаев, Иван Степанович]. Praviteli. Archived from the original on 7 May 2011. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  22. ^ a b c Shevchenko 2004, p. 66.
  23. ^ Договор об экономическом сообществе // Правительственный вестник. — 1991. — октябрь. — № 42. — С. 1—3.
  24. ^ "Председателем Межгосударственного экономического комитета – премьер-министром сообщества 14 ноября на заседании Государственного совета избран Иван Силаев – 15 ноября 1991 г. – Ельцин Центр". 2 December 2020. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020.
  25. ISBN 978-0-415-41527-9
    .
  26. ISBN 978-0-415-41527-9
    .
  27. ^ Горбачев Михаил Сергеевич // Praviteli
  28. ^ "Governments of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1964–1991)". elisa.net. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  29. ^ Указ Президента РСФСР от 18.12.1991 г. № 303
  30. ^ "Скончался экс-председатель Совета министров РСФСР Иван Силаев". Interfax.ru. 9 February 2023.
  31. ^ "Ivan Silayev, Last Russian Prime Minister Of The Soviet Era, Dies At 92". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. 9 February 2023.
  32. ^ Staff writer. Силаев, Иван Степанович: Надгробный памятник [Silayev, Ivan Stepanovich: Tombstone] (in Russian). warheroes.ru. Retrieved 4 April 2010.

General and cited references

  • Shevchenko, Iulia (2004). The Central Government of Russia: From Gorbachev to Putin. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing.
    ISBN 978-0-7546-3982-4
    .

External links
Political offices
Preceded by
Alexander Vlasov
 Premier of the Russian SFSR
15 June 1990 – 26 September 1991 		Succeeded by
Oleg Lobov (acting)
Preceded by Premier of the Soviet Union
28 August 1991 – 19 December 1991 		Succeeded by
Post abolished
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